Pointless
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: ...then again, I'd never really seen the point of it. But maybe that was the point itself.


_A/N: This is what happens when I start thinking about the good old days of season one, when things were perfect and we didn't have all these damn cast changes to worry about...ignore me. This would be another rant. But CI's not mine, and never will be. Guess this could be considered somewhat of a post-ep for 'Yesterday' if you look hard enough..._

The office felt colder than it normally did when I walked back in. I had the feeling that it wasn't the office, but rather myself. I wouldn't have been surprised to find that it _was_ me, but before I could figure it out, a numb feeling settled over me, taking the place of everything else.

I hated how old cases always seemed to come back when I least expected them to. But then again, I knew I should've known that sooner or later, this one would. It was, after all, but one of many that still haunted me. It was also one of those that I and my partner at the time had put a good amount of effort into…more so than any other case, if I did say so myself.

I wondered why. Back in Homicide, everything had been considered run of the mill unless it was particularly graphic. Alyssa Cooney's death hadn't been. Yet we'd taken it as one of the high profiles and ran. I'd never figured out exactly why that had happened, but it had. We'd worked that case for what had felt like forever, but had never gotten anywhere with it. Eventually, we'd been made to push it to the so-called "back burners" and there it had remained, forgotten until now.

It amazed me sometimes how cases long ago gone cold could resurface only to be solved. I found it ironic that her case had found me again, all these years later. I was jealous, in a way, of my detectives, for their ability to do what I had been unable to. It was odd; I'd never felt that way before, but I did now, and I didn't like it.

So I left. The workday was pretty much over anyways, and I knew no one would miss me. It was cold outside, too; night was falling over the city and I pulled my coat closer around me, looking up at the sky as I did. It looked the same, but I couldn't help but feel as if something had changed. I wondered what it was, and knew that it would be a while before it hit me.

I wanted to go home, but at the same time, I didn't. So I wandered through the city, aimlessly, with no specific destination in mind. It felt like forever had gone by before I finally stopped, exhausted, both mentally and physically. It was then that I realized where I was. Half of me wanted to turn and leave. The other half wanted to stay. The latter half ended up winning and I got out of the car.

My feet felt heavy as I made my way into the cemetery, turning onto one of the paths that would lead me to where I now wanted to be. My footsteps seemed to echo, and I wished they wouldn't. I was looking for an answer, not a headache. But it was starting to appear that one would not come without the other. When I finally stopped, I closed my eyes, and remained where I was for a long moment before opening them again.

There in front of me was a familiar headstone, lit by one of the streetlights that made it possible for me to see. The name etched into the granite was Alyssa's, followed by her birthdate…and date of death. By my standards, she had still been a baby when she died; grown physically, yes, but she was only a few years younger than my oldest was now, and that somehow made this time worse. I wondered what she would have been like, had her life not been so abruptly ended.

And not for the first time, I found myself wondering what drove people to do the things they did. For everything I saw day in and day out, it was hard to ever really see the good side of anyone. But there was one, or so I wanted to believe. If there was one thing I'd learned, it was that seeing was believing. I had seen a lot, but at times was unwilling to believe that anyone was capable of what it was that I saw.

I reached out before I realized that I was doing, and felt the cold stone beneath my fingertips. Somehow it made everything that much clearer. Two cases had been closed, both of them from years gone by long ago, but cases all the same. Alyssa's had been one of them. For her, justice had finally been served.

But it was pointless, I mused as I turned and started to walk away, pointless for me to wonder, because I always would, pointless to hope that people would change, because they wouldn't….Pointless to wait for someone else to make a difference, take on the worst of the city, and close the cases that fell in our laps, because it would never happen. And it was pointless more often than not to hope for justice, because it wasn't always served.

That was the part that hurt the most.


End file.
